Facebook’s (FB) disastrous second quarter conference call erased $119 billion in market capitalization in a single session marking the worst one day drop for any large-cap company in history while the stock shed a fifth of its value. Since then, ancillary fallout emanating from its core data misuse scandal involving Cambridge Analytica continue to surface.
Security issues affecting 50 million accounts, a lawsuit alleging concealing video ad measurements and increasing EU scrutiny have continued to plague the stock since its second-quarter implosion. The original mishandling user data resulted in the stock tumbling from $195 to $152 or 22% at the time. Facebook appreciated off those data misuse lows and broke out to $220, however, this scenario ended abruptly on the heels of its Q2 earnings. Facebook issued a major guide down in growth for the next few quarters tampering growth expectations in the near term. Facebook is facing a challenging confluence of slowing revenue growth, margin compression and stagnant daily active users in the near to intermediate term.
There’s been a recent initiative that has the backing of four large institutional investors to remove Mark Zuckerberg as Facebook’s chairman in the wake of all of these security issues. Despite these headwinds, Facebook is still posting accelerating revenue growth across all geographies, expanding market penetration with Instagram’s IGTV, Facebook’s Stories and monetization efforts in Messenger and WhatsApp. Facebook is still poised to grow at a double-digit clip with the most recent growth rate coming in at 42% in Q2.
The long-term picture looks bright for Facebook, and the recent sell-off in the stock and tech cohort is a good opportunity to initiate a long position as the company contends with and addresses all the issues across its platforms (Figure 1). Facebook remains a premier large-cap growth stock and inexpensive relative to other large-cap growth stocks in its cohort heading into Q3 earnings.
Figure 1 – FANG cohort performance throughout the tech sell-off with Facebook, Amazon, Netflix, and Google all shedding ~10% of their market capitalization
Scandals and High-Level Departures
There’s been a slew of negative press regarding additional issues negatively impacting the company’s platform and inflicting further damage on its reputation. Facebook disclosed a security issue that affected 50 million accounts. Continue reading "Facebook - Compelling Buy Heading Into Q3 Earnings"
